


Home is a Library

by Morning66



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Growing Up, Libraries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:02:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25372096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning66/pseuds/Morning66
Summary: Two blocks over and one up from the Granger house is a library, short and stout and not the biggest in the city, but a library all the same.
Kudos: 6





	Home is a Library

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!! :))

Hermione is two when her parents move from an apartment in the city to a quiet, leafy-green suburb of London. 

It’s a good place to live, they think, a good place to raise a child. Peaceful and safe, away from the bustle of the city, away from dangerous streets and seedy neighborhoods. The schools nearby are strong, they murmur at night when their little girl is long asleep. She’s only two and they can already see the intelligence glinting in her eyes, a fire that they want to keep alight and alive. Maybe she’ll be a dentist, they whisper and laugh. Maybe.

( _Of course, Hermione Jean Granger will be no more a dentist than Albus Dumbledore an accountant. But can anyone really blame the Grangers for dreaming? There is so much they don’t know, not yet, not for nine years time, but still they dream in the ways their limited world view will allow, hoping for a bright future for their daughter._

_Maybe she will never go to those high performing secondary schools nearby, maybe she will face danger far greater than any bad neighborhood in London, but that does not make their dreams any less important._ )

Two blocks over and one up from their house is a library, short and stout and not the biggest in the city, but a library all the same. When Mrs. Granger sees it, she squeezes her husband’s hand tight.

“This is the house,” She whispers, voice reverent. She and her husband both love books, love flipping pages and smelling the musty scent of an old one. Hermione, in time, will too.

On Saturdays, when the clinic is closed, Mrs. Granger walks those three blocks to the library, her hand in Hermione’s. In the children’s section, they do Mommy and Me Book Club, Hermione nestled in her mother’s lap, surrounded by other mothers bouncing babies and attempting to contain toddlers. While the other children wriggle and squirm, Hermione sits quietly, enraptured by the stories the leader reads, which makes Mrs. Granger smile.

“This place, these books, they’re your home, dearie. They’ll always be there for you,” Mrs. Granger tells Hermione one Saturday as they’re leaving for the day.

“Yes, mummy.” Hermione says with a smile. Mrs. Granger smiles back. She knows her daughter, for all her intelligence, doesn’t understand, not yet. Someday, though, someday she will.

* * *

And so the years pass, as years tend to do, and Hermione grows, as children tend to do. She starts school, which she likes, very much so, but for all her might cannot seem to make friends. 

While the other children giggle and gossip at lunch, smearing red popsicles over their mouths like lipstick, Hermione reads the back of the wrapper, writes down Ascorbic Acid and Maltodextrin in crooked handwriting on a napkin. While other children chase each other in the grass when school has ended, Hermione sets out for the library.

It’s not that she tries to be different, tries to stick out like a sore thumb, it’s just that she does.

That’s okay, though. She’s got her parents, who love her more than anything, she knows, and she’s got all the books in the library, an army of friends always there to welcome her.

And so most days after school, and most days in the summer, Hermione trudges to the library and sits amidst the stacks. She reads everything and anything she can get her hands on, fiction, nonfiction and anywhere in between.

“You’re our best patron!” Mrs. Fisher, Hermione’s favorite librarian, tells her once as she shows her new books that have yet to be put out in circulation. “You get first dibs, dear.”

Hermione grins wide, looking over the shiny covers in awe. “I just love books.” 

While it’s true, it’s not the only reason why she likes the library. She likes the library because sometimes it seems to be the only public place that doesn’t mock her for how she is, for what she likes. It’s quiet, peaceful, and welcoming to a little girl with crazy hair who likes books better than people, who’s probably too smart for her own good, some would say. In those days, there aren’t many places like that.

As Hermione pours over the new books, she hears Mrs. Fisher whispering to another librarian. She knows she shouldn’t listen, knows it’s impolite too, but she can’t help herself. “That girl, that Hermione, mark my word, she’ll go far. She’s going places.”

Hermione smiles at that. Someone has faith in her. 

( _In time, Hermione will forget about Mrs. Fisher. No one blames her, of course. In the coming years her world will become increasingly confusing, increasingly complicated, increasingly dark. She will have an important role to play in a fight for the good of the world. Of course she won’t have time for childhood memories, for people she hasn’t seen in years._

_But Mrs. Fisher will not forget about Hermione. Years will pass, and she will still remember the little girl with the buck-tooth grin who loved books. When she reads the newspapers, she will scan articles on scientific advancements, on Nobel Prize Winners, for the name Hermione Granger. Years and years and years into the future, when the internet has been established and Mrs. Fisher’s granddaughter sets up the box-like contraption in her living room, she will search the name Hermione Granger._

_Nothing will come up._

_Mrs. Fisher will frown. Maybe she got the name wrong. It has been a long time. Or maybe she was just plain wrong. Maybe her memories have distorted with time and the girl she remembers was not so bright, not so kind, not so destined for important things. She is getting old._

_She won’t ever know that Hermione did become important. That Hermione saved the world and is now leading it, still buck-toothed, still with frizzy hair, still with a love of books._ )

* * *

Hermione spends the summer before she goes off to Hogwarts at the library, too. On the hot, balmy days, she packs her bag and sits in a corner, obscured by shelves and pulls out magic books her mother bought for her at the beginning of the summer. In case anyone comes over, she puts elastic book covers over the fronts so they won’t know what she’s reading.

Hermione’s eleven and her world is about to change irreversibly forever. It’s exciting and she is excited, but it’s scary too. What if she doesn’t make friends? What if she’s really bad at magic? What if it’s all a joke and she can’t do magic at all?

( _Poor, poor girl. She doesn’t yet know that those worries are merely trifles compared to what she will one day face. She will be good, very good. She will have friends better than she has ever imagined. But still it is almost not enough to stop the onslaught of darkness._ )

It’s a lot for a child to take in, so on those days when she feels especially doubtful, she revels in the comfort of the library. This place that still welcomes her, comforts her even now, even when she’s gotten impossibly weirder, even when she’s a witch. 

In the fall, she goes to Hogwarts and it is everything and nothing like she expected. It’s a world of contradictions, a world of opposing statements that all fit together somehow. There are so many kind people, but also those more evil than she ever imagined. She’s the top of her class, the best witch in her year, but still ridiculed by some for her blood. It’s beautiful and magnificent, but at times monstrous and dangerous. 

The library at Hogwarts is beautiful in its own right, books upon books upon books. Books hundreds of years older than her with hundreds of things she has never even heard of. Despite this, it will never feel like home as much as her first library.

Maybe it’s because she always, especially as the years pass, has a purpose in going there. To study, to research, to do this or that. Important things, true, but she never has time to just take it all in, to spend afternoons there wondering the stacks with no explicit purpose and no care in the world.

* * *

The day before Hermione makes the most difficult decision of her life, she walks two blocks over and one block up to the old library. She should be spending it with her parents, soaking in their company for what could very well be the last time, but her mom had asked her to return a few books and see if the one she had on hold was in. Current plan notwithstanding Hermione is a good daughter, a dutiful daughter, so she smiled and nodded and set off.

She stands in the library, the place that was once her second home, the place that she once loved the most. It’s changed in the years since she’s been inside. They’ve gotten a self-checkout machine. The new books are now on the left instead of the right. It seems smaller now, less magnificent then it once did. That, though, might be because she’s changed and not it.

She hasn’t been here in so long, not since before Hogwarts. She never meant for that to happen, but life has gotten in the way. As the years flew by, as the world darkened, summers at home to lounge at the library turned into a few days with her parents here and there, trying to squeeze in a year’s worth of time into a meager couple of days.

As she walks the shelves, she stares at the books and, despite what she will do tomorrow, smiles. Once this place protected her against the evils of elementary school conformity, her biggest enemy at the time. She was a different girl then and not just because she couldn’t do magic. She hadn’t yet learned the horrors of the world, the depravity that it contained. Sometimes, late at night, when she’s at her darkest points, Hermione wishes she could tell that girl to ignore that letter, to reject her admittance to Hogwarts. In the daylight, though, she knows she’d always choose this life.

As she stands gazing at a display of new books, a librarian approaches her.

“Do you need any help finding anything, dear?” Hermione doesn’t recognize the women. She’s not sure why she expected to. It’s been years since she’s been here and the library has likely had turnover in the librarian department.

“No, just looking. Thank you, though.”

“Alright, well if you need anything let me know, sweetie.” The woman turns away, heels sinking in the carpet. She pauses and turns around. “Here, have a bookmark to go!”

The librarian hands her a slip of paper and Hermione takes it, wrapping her fingers around it. As the woman walks away, Hermione studies the bookmark. There’s a book at the end of a rainbow, the phrase With reading, anything is possible! in large print.

With reading.

Anything is possible.

Hermione breathes in through her mouth. Anything is possible. They can do this. 

Spoiler alert: they do do it.

( _In the future, Hermione will bring her children here. Not often, sure, but once or twice because she doesn’t want to forget her heritage, her childhood._

_She’ll stroll in with them, Hugo in a pram, Rose clinging to her hand. No one will give her a second glance, just another stay at home mum taking her kids for a day at the library. It won’t be true, but that’s what they’ll see._

_Hermione will just smile and read her children the same books she read as a child, breathing in the place which was once her home._ )


End file.
